The British Cult that Worshiped Hitler
The room was cold, but the atmosphere was electric. Huddled in rows, thirty inmates of Peveril Internment Camp on the Isle of Man, were held in taut expectation. James Larratt Battersby, known around the camp as ‘The Mad Hatter’, had rallied these men, promising them a spectacle of a speech. Battersby was known for being a powerful salesman, his stories from his time in the British Union of Fascists and his own rousing speeches had helped him sell this proposition.
The man they had come to see? Thomas St. Barbe Baker. His reputation preceded him. He was loud, outspoken and known as a radical Christian. Some had their suspicions however, and pegged him as more of a con artist than convert. Whether by fortuitous coincidence or by design, he had made friends with the richest people in the camp, and seemed to target those with purchasable loyalties and money to spend.
This didn’t dent the excitement of the men that had filled the room to hear him speak. Baker said he had a direct revelation from the Holy Spirit he had to share. And, as he stepped up in front of these men, there did seem to be a sense of some sort of presence around him. Battersby would say that this was because of his connection to God. Others would say it was his own cocksure confidence and heightened self-perception.
As Baker began, gesticulating, his voice filling the room, Battersby was enthralled, the men enraptured and something was being born. Something that would change the lives of Battersby, Baker and the other men and women that would join them. A new group, a new organisation, a new League of Christian Reformers.
As Baker reached the end of his stirring rhetoric, his brow was beaded with sweat, his voice becoming hoarse. Even before he finished his final words, the men before him leapt to their feet, applauding, raising their arms and shouting ‘Heil Hitler!’
This was the moment that marked the beginning of the League of Christian Reformers.
That was 1942. But, the story begins a decade earlier. Oswald Mosley, a politician of limited success, founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932. And it was here that all of the founding members of the League would find their starts.
The true power and leader of the League, Thomas St. Barbe Baker became a prominent member of the BUF, and was friends with Oswald Mosley himself.
James Larratt Battersby, Baker’s loyal disciple and fellow founder of the League, was a donor and organiser for the British Union of Fascists. He became the district leader for the Stockport branch and rose to be a prominent speaker. Known to give ‘engaging’ speeches to ‘attentive and enthusiastic’ audiences, Battersby became known as an effective, ‘well-reasoned’ and powerful speaker that contributed much to ‘the coffers of the BUF’.
Baker and Battersby met another two men in Peveril Internment camp. Arthur Schneider and WG Barlow. Schneider would become the League’s most fervent supporter and avid member, and had been a district leader of the Kidderminster branch of the BUF, serving as an effective recruiter for the movement, taking the branch’s membership from 8 members to 20 in 1939.
Barlow had been a famous racing driver, before joining the BUF and eventually being interned at Peveril with Baker, Battersby, and Schneider.
However, the BUF was not the only Fascist organisation prominent in Britain in the pre-war years, nor was it the only Fascist organisation the members of the League were a part of. Baker had been a member of the Nordic League, one of the most ‘virulent pro-Nazi organisations’ (we have a brief episode about them coming out soon) that promoted extremist measures to push Nazism from 1935-39. Once the Nordic League was officially disbanded on the outbreak of war in 1939, Baker remained a member of the BUF before being arrested under Regulation 18b in 1940.
These political views and affiliations were what brought the future members of the League to the attention of MI5 and the government and led to their arrest under Defence Regulation 18b. Regulation 18b allowed the government to intern without trial those individuals they deemed as a threat to the nation by being opposed to the war against Germany. As Aaron Goldman records, Regulation 18b gave the Home Secretary the ability to ‘take action against anyone who was or had been a member of an organisation subject to "foreign influence or control" or whose leaders who had "sympathies with the system of government" of an enemy power.’ This provision was primarily aimed at Oswald Mosley and his BUF, bringing the future members of the League directly into the line of fire, as all of them were members of the BUF itself, or other Fascist organisations.
Battersby, originally the wealthy director of the successful Battersby Hats firm, was arrested in June 1940, taken to Camp 020 at Latchmere House in London, and, while there, wrote a diary that was later published as The Bishop Said Amen: On the Author's Experiences During Detention as a Pacifist, in which he complained about how ‘everything possible was done to agitate, frustrate and torment us’. From there, he was transferred to an internment camp in Berkshire, nicknamed ‘Ascot Concentration Camp’ by the BUF, with fellow Blackshirt, Charlie Watts. He was eventually moved to Peveril Internment Camp on the Isle of Man, where he met Thomas Guillaume St. Barbe Baker, and was converted to Baker’s extreme form of Christianity. He was eventually released from Peveril in 1943, and began preparations for the setting up of the League of Christian Reformers.
However, for Baker to end up in Peveril, the process was slightly longer. During the roundup of known and prominent Fascists, Baker went on the run. He shaved his distinctive walrus moustache, changing his appearance, before finally being found and imprisoned in Peveril for the rest of the war. He was one of the last to be released even after Oswald Mosley himself. Even before his internment, Baker had been on the more fanatical and outrageous end of the Fascist and religious spectrum, even going as far as to think that some marks on his baby son’s forehead constituted a swastika and his son was, therefore, the heir to Hitler. This led to his wife becoming increasingly worried about his deranged beliefs and filing for divorce. While in Peveril, rumours began to arise from guards and fellow inmates that maybe Baker was not everything he made out to be. According to one officer at Peveril, Baker seemed not have ‘the light of Nazi ideology burning in his eyes’ and that everything he did was calculated, that he potentially feigned madness in an effort to secure early release. Even a German psychologist interned with Baker was forced to remark, ‘the man was a fool, with neither brain nor idea.’ Rumours even rose that Baker only associated with Battersby because he was interested in Battersby’s money. Whether his politics or religion were genuine or staged for gain, one might never truly know. Whatever his true motivations were, however, they still led him to convert his fellow inmates and set up the League of Christian Reformers.
Arthur Schneider, the son of an Austrian immigrant, and an outspoken anti-British Fascist, had been watched by MI5 since 1938. He was arrested twice and taken before the Home Office Advisory Committee before eventually being sent to Peveril in 1941. Like Battersby, he was converted by Baker, and even wrote to his wife, a fellow BUF member in 1943, to explain his new-found ‘revelation’, to which she replied:
‘Your most peculiar letter arrived here this morning. That you had a definite motive in writing such an absurd letter, I am quite sure - but what your motive is, I haven't the least idea. Nor do I think you believe the rubbish you wrote to me - if you do - then you are crazy all right. I must admit that it puzzled me very much, that it even got here - why the censor allowed it, and so on. But I do not intend to discuss the subject - you should know my views by now, the only heartfelt wish I have, is that Hitler gets all that is coming to him, even quicker than it inevitably will come.’
Schneider, along with Baker, was one of the last to be released from Peveril, in 1945.
W.G. Barlow, was to be the man who eventually gifted the League their future headquarters at Kingdom House in Petworth. His fame and fortune he had won during his successful racing career was outshone by his political affiliations, and he, too, was arrested under this new regulation. In Peveril, and upon meeting Battersby, Baker and Schneider, his Fascism was infused with the religious convictions of those men, leading to him joining the Hitler-worshippers after the war. Originally buying River House in Petworth, a large property set in a considerable swathe of land, as a place to settle down with his wife and family after his release, he gifted it to Baker and Battersby without his wife’s knowledge or approval. The League renamed the property Kingdom House, and Arthur Schneider moved in during the summer of 1945, to begin preparations for the House to serve as the headquarters for the League upon Baker’s eventual release.
While on the Isle of Man, Schneider had converted his entire family, including his two sisters, who quickly joined him at Kingdom House. They left their Women’s Land Army hostel in late September 1945. They had been, and continued to be, avid evangelists for their Hitler religion. Schneider had written a letter to his sisters in 1943, praising them for doing their ‘very best to aquatint as many people as possible’ with their newfound faith. Indeed, they had converted their friend, Angela Lincoln, who had shared a room with them in the hostel.
When Baker was finally released, he arrived at Kingdom House, with an excited following and a church ready for him.
In their early days, they remained relatively quiet, keeping themselves to themselves and only very rarely engaging the outside world. They would make occasional visits to local churches, trying to convince them to accept their creed, but mostly kept a rather low profile.
That was until the German embassy in London was closed, and its contents began to be auctioned off.
On the 27th September 1945, James Larratt Battersby attended the auction at the former German Embassy in London. While there, he purchased a couple swastika flags, that would make a suitable accompaniment to their portrait of Hitler in Kingdom House. He also bumped into an old friend. Another former 18b internee: Robert Gordon Canning. He had been a prominent fascist before the war, a gun-runner for Arab forces that opposed the administration in Palestine during the 30s, and had been a part of the Nordic League, whilst also being a member of the BUF. He became very close friends with Mosley, travelling with him to Italy to visit Mussolini and, even, on a trip to Germany to meet Hitler. Gordon-Canning eventually left the BUF in 1938, after quarrelling with Mosley. He had ties to the League of Christian Reformers, but there is no evidence to suggest that he was ever a full member.
Gordon-Canning was at the auction with one acquisition in mind. A huge, granite bust of Adolf Hitler. He purchased it for around £500, equivalent to around £23,000 today. Or so the newspapers reported. Gordon-Canning was quick to challenge this, writing a letter to the Truth Newspaper in which he confirmed that he had purchased it for around £1000, not a mere £500. He wrote, ‘I mention this fact, not because it is of any particular interest to me, but because several irate, politically inspired critics called the sculpture ‘trash’.’ When asked about his purchase on the day, his response was confusing to the public, but encouraging to Battersby. He said, ‘Nearly 2000 years ago Jesus was mocked, scorned and crucified. To-day he is living force in the hearts and minds of millions of people in the West and those who mocked and scorned and tried him are to-day of no account.’ To the press, to the public, to everyone there on the day, Gordon-Canning compared Hitler to Jesus Christ and made his feelings plain.
Now with the bust in his possession, he headed to Petworth, and Kingdom House. The bust would be housed here, a fitting companion to Battersby’s flags, and a disturbing statement of intent.
This also launched the League into the public eye, brought them to the attention of Parliament and spelled the beginning of their downfall.
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the Present History Podcast, and the first episode in our Hitler’s Kingdom Come Project. Check back next week the the next instalment of the story of the British Cult that Worshipped Hitler. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok, subscribe on YouTube and check out our website at presenthistory.co.uk, so you never miss a piece of content. And we’ll see you next time on the Present History Podcast.
References
William J. Gage, ‘The Swastika Over Britain’, John Bull, 29 December 1945
The Blackshirt, 26 October 1934
The Blackshirt, 10 August 1934
The Blackshirt, 15 February 1935
Declassified MI5 File on Arthur J. Schneider, in the National Archives KV 2/1219, p.12.
Warburton & Wallder, Detainees List, p. 7
Declassified MI5 File on T.G. St Barbe Baker, in the National Archives HO 45/25732, p.11.
Weekly Dispatch London, ‘Still Active’, 22 October 1939.
Benewick, Robert, Political Violence & Public Order: A Study of British Fascism, (Allen Lane, 1969), p.289.
Dorril, Stephen, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism, (Penguin, 2007), p.465.
‘Defence Regulation 18B’, House of Commons, Hansard, 21 July 1942, vol 381, cc.1426-519.
"Civil Liberties in Great Britain and Canada During War," Harvard Law Review, Vol. 55 (1942), 1007, cited in Aaron L. Goldman, ‘Defence Regulation 18B: Emergency Internment of Aliens and Political Dissenters in Great Britain during World War II’, Journal of British Studies, May, 1973, Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 122.
Warburton, John & Jeffrey Wallder, The Defence Regulation 18B British Union Detainees List, Revised edition, (Friends of Oswald Mosley: 2008) p. 7.
Simpson, A.W. Brian, In the highest degree odious: Detention without trial in wartime Britain, (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1992) pp. 250–251.
Watts, Charlie, ‘It has happened here’ Comrade, June/July 1990, pp. 4-5.
‘Capt Thomas Guillaume St Barbe Baker M.C’, The Auxiliaries, <http://www.theauxiliaries.com/men-alphabetical/men-b/baker-tgstb/baker.html> [Accessed 21st April 2021]
Declassified MI5 File on Schneider, in the National Archives KV 2/1219
‘Arthur Schneider, Apostle of the Fuhrer’, The British Guardian, <http://britishguardian.blogspot.com/2020/05/arthur-schneider-apostle-of-fuhrer.html> [Accessed 3rd May 2021]
Daily Mirror, Thursday 29 November 1945, p.8
Declassified MI5 File on Capt. Robert Gordon-Canning, in the National Archives KV 2/878, p.75.
Gordon-Canning, Robert, Truth, Friday 04 January 1946, p.13.
Dundee Courier, Wednesday 28 November 1945, p.2.
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